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Why am I leaning forward?

As you see in my little About Me blurb, I’ve got a pretty crazy life right now. I attend UC Santa Cruz in California for my teaching credential and Master’s in Education. It’s a one-year program, which means it’s double the load compared to other programs. I will admit, the program has been insanely stressful at times and has caused me to have depression and anxiety during really busy moments. That’s pretty normal, though. Many of the people in the program are experiencing just as much depression and anxiety. (We joke about crying and drinking almost daily haha!) I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of what’s expected of us, but let’s just say it’s equivalent to working about 60 hours a week. It’s rough, but I LOVE IT!

I truly do, actually! I’m not being sarcastic. Ha. I adore teaching and learning, and my classmates have become my family in the short time we’ve been together. I’ve learned a tremendous deal and am starting to really hone my skills as an educator, which is my biggest goal. With the stress, though, I’ve found myself needing to pick up ‘tools’ to deal with it. I use a multitude of things at this point…

Coloring

Writing

Using a bullet journal (best invention I’ve seen in years)

Exercise, primarily hiking

Reading for pleasure when I can

Building a routine

All of them help quite a lot, but I’ve found my bullet journal and writing to be the most constructive. If you haven’t heard of bullet journaling yet, I suggest you look into it! Bulletjournal.com gives you the basics of starting one, but there are blogs that post about it too. Boho Berry does a fantastic job with her bullet journal, and it looks gorgeous. Doing it all fancy-like is an option, though. You don’t have to decorate it as much as she does. I decorate mine a little because it’s therapeutic, but I’m nowhere near as talented as Kara from Boho Berry. I’ll try to talk more about it in due time and share my tips. There are so many ideas out there about using a bullet journal. It also greatly helps with procrastination and anxiety, friends.

So, to answer the question: why am I leaning forward? The phrase comes from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, in which he says, “What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” It’s one of my many favorite quotes from him, and I find it relevant to how I live my own life. I may not travel to a new country every month, or jump off cliffs, or run with the bulls, but I am always leaning forward to pursue my own adventures. This blog happens to be one of them. I want to write more and share my ideas, no matter if I have one follower or one million. This isn’t for you (sorry, folks). This is for me, and I like the visual way of putting out ideas with blogging, rather than journaling and having no way of sharing it or making it visually appealing. I’m sure you people know what I mean…

Anyway, enjoy! (Or don’t!) If anything, I hope this helps someone – just one person. *squeeze*